Phew, what a busy month it’s been this month, work has been hectic and so has Mikey.

It felt like a really positive month with lots of progression and even a few ribbons!

First up we headed out for our first affiliated British Dressage outing and what a day it was!

Strutting our stuff!

Winner winner!

We had been busy working on our flat work at home (thank you Candice for all your help – couldn’t of done it without you!) and I am pleased to say well did quite well! In fact we did very well, a huge 74% in both the prelim and the novice to take home a win in both classes – needless to say I was over the moon and now aim to qualify for the Pet Plan Area Festivals at prelim level, I think (hopefully) we can be quite competitive, I will then aim to concentrate on competing at novice level for the rest of year and see if we can continue to get such lovely scores and comments as we did this time out, if nothing else to prove it wasn’t a fluke!

The Easter weekend seems like a life time away now (I hope you got to eat lots of lovely Easter Eggs!) but it was a busy one for us, we headed out for a spot of show jumping at Quainton Stud, as the last few rounds we have done we had been clear I decided it was time to step up and do an 80cm class, I was a bit nervous and even though its only 10cm the fences looked a bit on the big side at places on the course, but I put on my brave pants and gave it my best shot, we did OK, we were clear in the 70cm which we did to just get our confidence and get going and then had just a couple of poles in the 80cm, which isn’t bad considering – my plan now is to do some more 80cm outings and try and work towards some clear rounds at that height with the ultimate aim of my first BE event towards the end of this season!

Lots of fun was had at the West Wycombe Sponsored Ride, I went with my niece Amy, it’s a great ride, 10 miles in total I think it was, with some lovely fun jumps along the way – if you live near by I would highly recommend it for next year – smiles all around!

Smiles all round at the West Wycombe Sponsored Ride

We had a great at the Mini Tetworth Hunter Trials this month too, and Honeychop were kind enough to offer prizes to some of the winners and runners up, we also sponsored a fence out on the course, most horses jumped it very well, but a few had a cheeky stop, I think they were trying to grab a snack on the way round! The newly launched Lite and Healthy was a particular favourite for some of the lets say “rounder” ponies that were competing that day looking for a tasty low calorie fibre feed.

The Honeychop sponsored jump at Mini Tetworth

I don’t know if you have seen it advertised but there is a fantastic unaffiliated three-day event Grassroots Championship being held at Keysoe in Bedfordshire at the end of May, I have never done a three day event so I decided to bite the bullet and enter, it looks so much fun, the event is in association with Equo Events and Horse and Hound magazine and Mikey and I have been selected to feature in their “contender series” – we had to let people know who were are and what we do, you can read what we had to say for ourselves in our Horse and Hound online feature here.

We have also been selected by Horse and Hound to be a blogger for the event, our first blog went live this week, find out more about our three preparations by having a read here. So, we have made in Horse and Hound online, but can we do well enough to feature in the magazine itself?! Who knows, but I am going to give it my best shot, I am super excited for the three day event and created myself and 8 week plan as soon as we entered, with three weeks to go, its going well, but the nerves are beginning to set in, the dressage and show jumping I am pretty confident about, but the cross country phase is the one I will loose sleep over! As you may remember our journey XC hasn’t always been the easiest but I had a fantastic lesson with Nick Turner last week, Mike was on fire literally jumping his socks off – so lets hope he brings his ‘A’ game to the competition in a few weeks!

Game face!

I had a great time at Badminton last week as I am sure many of you did, I was there all week and we were joined by a very lovely VIP, Honeychop Henry, he had a great week, getting amongst the action, if you haven’t seen the pictures check them out on the Honeychop facebook and Instagram pages, and don’t forget to check back regularly for competitions!

Henry getting in on the cross country action (Photo credit Candice Pottage Photography)

Enjoying a spot of dressage (Photo credit Candice Pottage Photography)

Last up Mikey was yet again called upon for his good looks (!) this time for Equilibrium Products, Mikey had a great time eating his way through the photo shoot and can be seen in their adverts for their Vitamunch product!